


When The Shadows Play

by thejizzler



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Arkham Asylum, Canon-Typical Violence, Escape, M/M, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 05:30:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13734156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejizzler/pseuds/thejizzler
Summary: Freed from Arkham's grip, Oswald wonders whether or not his alliance with Jerome is about to come to bloody end.





	When The Shadows Play

**Author's Note:**

> This is inspired by [this tweet](https://twitter.com/OswaldClifton/status/965353178307923970), which consumed my entire being the second that I saw it. Accordingly, some of Jerome's dialogue here is lifted from Tim Burton's 1989 _Batman_.

Eyes closed and arms outstretched victoriously at his sides, Oswald sucks in his first breaths of unfiltered Gotham air in weeks. The sensation is a familiar one, his time in Arkham doing nothing to alter the air: it smells like fumes and death and is cold enough to sting his nostrils.

Oswald smiles with the thrill of it.

“Hey, Ozzie,” comes Jerome’s voice, popping the bubble of this perfect moment with all his usual gracelessness.

Too overjoyed with their escape to give his interruption the snap it deserves, Oswald opens his eyes and drops his arms back to his sides, turning to face him.

Jerome is eyeing him strangely (but then, Jerome seems incapable of eyeing anyone any other way, and Oswald has grown to find a charm in that).

“Yes, Jerome?” Oswald asks after a few uncertain beats of silence, the ghost of his old smile lifting the words.

“Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?”

In the wake of the question, Jerome stares still as a statue (unusual, and unsettling), cast in a silvery-blue light that softens all the carnage of his face but makes him no less terrifying.

Oswald freezes, all the joy of his newfound freedom sucked out of the air.

It’s not the first time he’s heard Jerome make this inexplicable inquiry. Last time, it’d been directed not at him but at an Arkham inmate who’d met a horrific end just moments later, the gush of his arterial spray painting Jerome head to toe in scarlet red. Jerome, being Jerome, had thrown his head back and laughed, and when Oswald had asked him what he’d meant by the question, his reply had chilled him to the bone:

“ _I ask that of all my prey. I just like the sound of it_.”

So this was it, then. Oswald had of course suspected their partnership was not one built to last (after all, no partnership is, Oswald has learned the hard way, again and again), but he’d hoped they’d at least make Gotham hurt a little first, together.

Oh well.

Jerome begins stalking toward him with the slow, concentrated steps of a tiger. Oswald only watches, allowing his eyes and mouth to drop open, the perfect picture of helpless fear. Jerome steps closer, then closer still, until he’s near enough that Oswald can see every dip in the knotted texture of his skin.

Jerome’s arm reaches toward him, but Oswald is quicker. The blade tucked into his sleeve is sliding into his palm and leveled up at Jerome’s jugular in the space of just a breath.

Oswald tenses when he feels Jerome’s hand, seemingly unarmed, at his waist. The touch is gentle, excessively so, and Oswald’s bladed hand wavers.

Jerome laughs, presses his neck forward and into Oswald’s blade. Oswald watches as the too-blunt edge of it pierces his skin, the blood that drips down his throat black in the moonlight.

“Oh, come on, Ozzie,” Jerome grins. “You didn’t really think I was gonna kill ya, did you?”

The touch at Oswald’s waist tightens into a grip.

“That question -”

“What I ask of all my prey, I know.”

Muscles tensing all over again, Oswald presses the knife harder at his neck, the blood beneath it flowing more freely still.

“I don’t always _prey_ the same _way_ , if you catch my drift,” Jerome continues, the blacks of his eyes catching silver light.

“I’m not sure that I do,” Oswald says, voice and blade steady.

“Lemme show you,” Jerome whispers, the hand at Oswald’s waist slipping down onto his hip as the other reaches softly for his neck.

Stunned, Oswald drops the blade before he can think better of it, and the next thing he knows, Jerome’s awful mouth is on his, lips tight and too smooth, like the scar tissue that covers Oswald’s leg.

Oswald makes a surprised noise against him, and Jerome takes advantage of the parting of his lips, tongue slithering inside and licking up the roof of Oswald’s mouth in a way that makes Oswald go limp in his arms and then _hungry_ , his own tongue sliding against Jerome’s, wet and gross and _hot_ like nothing Oswald has ever felt before.

Jerome pulls back then, smiling coolly as Oswald pants and looks up at him with wide eyes that are now neither fearful nor performative.

“I see my drift has been caught,” Jerome beams.

“Yes,” Oswald agrees, breathless, licking the taste of Jerome still on his lips. “But we need to get out of here before _we_ get caught.”

He gestures toward Arkham, that stinking awful structure standing tall as ever, to emphasize the point.

“We’ve got time,” Jerome coos, hand at Oswald’s hip moving to grip playfully at his ass. “There’s not a soul in there left conscious.”

Oswald can’t help but to laugh at that. There’s no denying their effectiveness.

“Dance with me,” Jerome commands, but it’s tender as a question.

Oswald replies by taking the hand at his neck into his own, fingers interlaced.

He lays his head on Jerome’s chest and lets him lead the rhythmless sway that follows. He relishes the feel and smell of him, warm and coppery like fresh blood, but his eyes stay fixed on the pieces of Gotham he can glimpse through the bars of Arkham’s gate, as grimy and sick with pain as the asylum he’s leaving behind.

Together, Oswald hopes, he and Jerome will burn this city down and build it back up again in the ugly paradox of their joint image. It’s an unrealistic fantasy, no doubt (after all, no partnership is built to last, at least not where Oswald is concerned), but it brings him comfort, soothes the stings that Jim Gordon, Sofia Falcone, Victor Zsasz, Edward Nygma left itching beneath his skin.

Oswald closes his eyes, finally, and breathes Jerome in deep.

If this - swaying free in Arkham stripes in the moonlight, the promise of shared demolition in the air - is the closest Oswald ever comes to love, he thinks it might just be enough.


End file.
